


Making It

by scarredsodeep



Series: Girl Out Boy [6]
Category: Fall Out Boy
Genre: Bathroom Sex, Canon Compliant, F/F, Fall Out Girl, Femslash, Gas Station, Gen, Genderbending, Girl Band, Girl!Patrick Stump, Grumptrick, Humor, Jealousy, Lesbian Character, Nonbinary Character, Semi-Public Sex, Summer of Like, Tales from 2005, Teasing, Touring, Van Days, Warped Tour, Warped Tour 2005, girl out boy, girl!Pete Wentz - Freeform, st louis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-25
Updated: 2020-09-25
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:27:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26653651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scarredsodeep/pseuds/scarredsodeep
Summary: Girl Out Boy is on Warped Tour, and Jo Trohman has to pee.--For the Warped Tour 2020 challenge, prompt "gas station."
Relationships: Patrick Stump/Pete Wentz
Series: Girl Out Boy [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/940746
Comments: 18
Kudos: 39
Collections: Warped 2020





	Making It

**Author's Note:**

> I live in St Louis these days, and I've been completely charmed by the anecdote about Joe getting drunk in the parking lot of the gas station with the biggest Amoco sign in the country. (It really is huge.) It's about a mile from my house and the whole family calls it the Troh-moco without knowing why.
> 
> Please enjoy this short, silly, smutty sweetness! I'll see you all soon with a fairy tale for fall. (Also--please enjoy the classiest preview image possible for this story about bickering and gross public bathrooms)
> 
> van days vibes

“I can’t do this, guys,” Jo moans, peeking around the edge of the bathroom door. It’s one of those gas stations with a rust-streaked door built into the exterior walls, opening up onto the kind of dimly-lit single restroom that inspired the title _crapper._ A porta-potty might actually be cleaner, with the added benefit of not opening directly into a parking lot, in the Bermuda triangle of an ice machine, a gas pump, and a trucker with a leer.

Andy sticks their head into the little shit cubicle and recoils. “Oh yeah. That’s a bad one. Whatever’s on the wall, I can’t tell if it came from a human or from a roadkill.”

Jo bobs up and down, a furious potty dance. “Is it just me or is every gas station we try _worse_?”

Pete leans out of the van waving her Sidekick. “Got a text from the only other girl on this tour,” she calls. It’s an exaggeration—there’s like ten other girls, if you count merch booth babes—but Pat knows exactly which one Pete means: Mikaela Way. It fills Pat with irrational, possessive grumpiness that living out of a van during a Midwest summer does not help. Pete’s _her_ girlfriend. Why does Emo Waif Mikey Way need to spend every second with her? 

“She found a good bathroom closer to St. Louis. I’ve got the address!”

Jo does a tiny celebratory jump, careful not to unclench her legs, and hobbles back to the van. Andy takes the wheel.

Pat always imagined Warped Tour like this holy grail, the most magical experience of _Making It_ a little basement pop punk band from Chicago could aspire to. Now that they’re actually on it, though—a single girl band among six stages of dudes, clawing their way in caravans of tour buses and equipment trailers across the thickest, most corn-filled part of the country—it’s not that glamorous. Specifically the bathrooms. The bathrooms are specifically unglamorous. 

Using the public festival bathrooms is like playing Minesweeper with piss puddles, shit smears, and clogged sinks. They’re gender segregated in theory, but festival-goers of all genders are gross. They pretty much turn into free-for-all troughs of mud and urine within five minutes of the festival gates opening. And the so-called private musician bathrooms, those are just for dudes. The tour organizer, when Jo cornered him, said something New Age-y and uplifting like _‘Gender’s just a prison, babe.’_ “Okay, then where should I put my used tampons?” she asked, and all the color drained from his face like periods made _him_ lose blood, and he backed out of the conversation stammering. Basically, they haven’t seen a clean bathroom since they left home, and their bathroom isn’t like. A _paragon_ of tidiness, or anything. 

And did Pat mention they’re living out of a van? Still? The same van they’ve been touring in since, like, they invented touring? Now they’ve got _two_ albums out, a really popular single, a bunch of homebrew artistic music videos, and a main stage billing at Warped Tour. Like, Jo went out with the Dropkick Murphys last night. The van is great, they’ve all had good times in the van, but at some point a girl wants to live somewhere with a shower. That’s all she’s saying.

Pat stares out the window as increasingly unbeautiful spits of Illinois go by. She works on stewing about how she’d like to take a shower that’s not in a sink or the bus of dumb, stupid My Chemical Romance, because if she doesn’t give herself something to grouch about, she’ll go back to obsessing about Mikey Way. Of the aforementioned dumb, stupid My Chemical Romance. Who have a tour bus. And a shower. And two really good albums that Pat actually enjoyed a lot, and would like to talk to Mikey’s sister about, but now she can’t, on principle. Um, the principle of being petty and jealous.

Here’s the difference between lusting after your best friend and having her as a girlfriend: having her as a girlfriend is _exhausting_.

Twenty minutes later, they’re officially in Missouri. Pat grouses to a more interesting view as they cross a bridge next to the Arch, the equipment trailer on the back of the van whipping a bit too wide around curves at expressway speeds. Pat wishes the trailer at least said _Fall Out Boy_ on the side, hot pink and underlined in knives or something. Instead Jo and Pete paid someone to airbrush a sexy wizard lady on it, who is wearing both a pointed wizard’s hat and a mystical, academic bikini, because they think it’s hilarious. Pat would prefer to be taken seriously, but hey, teenage boy-caliber tit jokes are good too. Pat can’t be sure, because she won’t take her eyes off the window, but she’s pretty sure Pete hasn’t stopped texting Mikey this whole time. She keeps giggling. Pat hates Mikey Way a little more with each giggle.

Here’s what Mikey Way has going for her that Pat Stump does not, a list:

  * She’s four years older, basically Pete’s age, and therefore more mature, serious, and capable of understanding what Pete wants in life. (Maybe a five year age difference isn’t much over the lifespan, but it can feel insurmountable when your girlfriend’s been to college and you have not, when your girlfriend can drink in bars and see shows in 21+ clubs and you cannot, when your girlfriend lived with a billion roommates and figured out her sexuality and dated a billion people of every gender before she ever met you, but you were in high school then, and you did not.)
  * Her band is _really_ good.
  * So good they have a tour bus.
  * She plays the same instrument as Pete, so they probably _get each other_ on a deep spiritual level that Pat can’t relate to.
  * She gets the point of texting.
  * She even seems to enjoy it.
  * (Presumably she’s too successful to be on her parents’ phone plan, but if she is, clearly they, unlike Pat’s parents, will pay for a voice + text package.)
  * She’s tall and thin and fashionable, in a platforms-and-vinyl depression-chic sort of way Pat would never be bold or emo enough to pull off. 
  * As a fellow Sad Girl, probably she can relate to _that_ huge, scary, overwhelming part of Pete’s life, the part she needs help with, the part her current girlfriend can barely stand to even talk about.
  * The general consensus among people seems to be: they want to fuck her.
  * Because she’s hot.
  * Oh, and she _has daily access to a shower_.



So yeah. Pete’s probably going to leave her any second. Not that Pat’s insecure in their relationship. It’s just—the giggling. So much giggling. And she knows better than anyone how easy it is to fall in love with Pete. And the _list_! Okay, maybe she’s a little insecure.

“What’s going in there, blue eyes?” Pete sing-songs, poking her in the side at the exact wrong moment. Pat feels like a tea kettle of irritability that has just begun to steam.

“Just thinking about all the reasons you’re probably gonna leave me for Mikey Way,” Pat sighs. Is Pete too old for her, too hot for her, too good at being a rock star for her? Yes to all of it. But the shit they’ve been through has made them pretty boss at communication. At least for twentysomething famous-ish people whose way of life, career, and relationship are all snowballed into the same thing. Pat isn’t ever afraid to say what she feels, not to Pete, not to anyone in her band.

“Oh, stop,” Pete says, dismissive when Pat wants comfort. “We only met a week ago. I’ve known your soul since before either of us was born.”

“ _Met_ a week ago. You’ve been messaging online for like, six months leading up to this tour.”

“Two months, Patricia. And yeah—how many successful, rising star women bassists in the punk scene do _you_ know? Of course we’re gonna talk. I have told you one hundred times that you should message Hayley Williams—”

“I don’t want to talk to Hayley Williams!” Pat interrupts. She’s had it up to _here_ with Pete’s exhortations that she cold-call sexy, talented, confident women and, like, learn how to be them.

“I just bet you’d have a lot to talk about.” Pete’s using her annoying, I’ve-been-25-for-nearly-three-weeks-and-I-have-acquired-new-wisdom-with-age voice. Pat wants to strangle her, which is not new, either to their friendship or their romance.

Why doesn’t Pete get that the only person Pat wants to talk to is _her_? And yeah. She wants that from Pete too. It’s possessive, it’s smothering, it’s heternormative, it’s _dumb_. But she wants it. She wants her girlfriend to want to talk to her more than anyone else on the internet or in the entire world. She wants to be Pete’s favorite person ever to live, forever. Is that. So much. To _ask_.

“You’re changing the subject,” Pat says, surly.

“Yes, and _thank you_ for doing it,” says Jo from the front seat. “I have to pee too fuckin’ bad to listen to Round 17 of Pat’s Irrational Jealousy.”

“Hey!” Pat protests. But it’s true. This has been going on all week. Still, she can’t resist a van snipe: “If we had a tour bus like My Chem, we could fight in a separate room, and you guys wouldn’t take sides.”

“I’d still take sides,” Andy declares, just to be like that. “D’you think they bicker more or less since they finally started practicing Sapphic rites?” they ask Jo. One of Andy and Jo’s special pleasures is finding humiliating ways to indicate just how much sex they overhear. It’s a mistake, probably, to live with your bandmates even when you’re not on tour, but Pat worries she and Pete really will kill each other if they live alone.

“More,” Jo answers without hesitation. “But it’s less weird than the inexplicable sexual tension when they used to scream at each other about the use of prepositions.”

“I just don’t like to sing bad writing,” Pat mutters defensively to herself.

“Hey!” It’s Pete’s turn to protest.

“Can you both just _shut up_ until I get to _pee_!”

Pat bites her tongue as the highway wends between an enormous light-up Budweiser sign and an IKEA. But by the time Andy’s moving over to let someone merge, she blurts, “I just don’t get why she’s so fascinating you text her all day instead of talking to me.”

“For fuck’s sake!” Pete is so exasperated she pulls on her chunky bangs like she’ll tear them out. “Were you interested in talking? Because I thought you’ve been pretty committed to this sulk since we left Milwaukee!” 

Jo opens her mouth and screams. She doesn’t stop screaming until Pete and Pat have both stopped trying to bicker over the sound. (It takes a while. Jo may have a future as a vocalist.) Andy, to their enormous credit, just keeps cruising through the city of St. Louis like these are perfectly typical driving conditions. At this point, they kind of are.

A park, a science museum, an overpass, an exit: finally, they get off the highway, chugging uphill towards the largest Amoco sign Pat has ever seen. Like, not an exaggeration: it’s fucking massive. It could eclipse the rising sun. It sits at the top of the hill like a behemoth of capitalism, like a prop stolen from the set of Mad Max. She sweats against the van’s failing A/C. June in Missouri is, apparently, twenty degrees hotter than June in Wisconsin. God, she wishes she smelled better. She wished any of them smelled better.

Pete, pouting in the seat beside her, of course smells wonderful. Like coconut-vanilla bodywash, her weird earthy organic conditioner, and a touch of animal sweatiness that only makes Pat want to lick her more. Like a person who’s been showering in the MCR tour bus every day. Like a person who’s been wet, naked, wrapped in a tiny towel in front of that entire band _every day_. She feels insane, possessive, horny as anyone who’s had no privacy with their very hot girlfriend for over a week. Why is it that even the _stink_ of Pete’s _sweat_ makes Pat _want her_? 

This entire situation is colossally unfair.

Pat vows Pete will be the last woman hotter than her that she’ll ever date. Pat vows Pete will be the last person she’ll ever date, period. Pat vows to spend the rest of her life with Pete, would do it in a heartbeat, but also, over the course of a lifetime, she’d definitely kill her. Over anything, really, but especially over texting Mikey Way. How young is too young to get married? How young is too young to lock that down forever, when _that_ is a wholly gorgeous yet tortured woman whom everyone on this continent seems to want? And what’s the policy, exactly, on wanting to strangle someone in equal proportion to wanting to marry them?

Pat goes ahead and smacks her head against the window, just a little. Like blunt trauma is her best shot at making the thoughts stop. God, she is over this van. 

Andy navigates them expertly beneath the looming Amoco sign and into the promised land, hitting only two curbs with the wheels of the trailer. They’ve barely pulled into a parking spot when Jo explodes out the passenger side door. As she runs into the gas station, Pete grabs Pat roughly by the hand. “C’mon, jerkhole,” she glowers. “You’re coming with me.”

Pat protests, but it’s only for show. Honestly she hates the way this feels, and she’d rather fight in front of the slushie machine in a thousand St. Louis gas stations than just sit here and steep in it. She lets Pete pull her out of the van—“Ooh, can you get me a PayDay?” asks Andy, because they all fight so much it may as well be any other snack run—and into the gas station. Pete tugs her all the way into the bathroom, into the handicap stall, and locks the door behind them.

It’s not much privacy—the firehose blast of Jo’s epic whiz fills up the entire room—but it’s the first time they’ve had a lock between them and their bandmates since Warped Tour started, so it feels like being sealed into a vault. Pat wants to launch herself at Pete, tear Pete’s billowy armhole tank off, kneel on this at least sort of clean tile and fill her mouth with her girlfriend’s most sensitive skin—

But there’s the fight Pat started to wrap up first, which Pete makes clear when she pushes Pat back, two fingers to the collarbone in a _get away from me_ jab. “What is your _damn problem_ ,” Pete snaps, and Pat is perplexed to see real hurt, real wildness in those melting brown eyes. 

Pat was pretty sure _she_ was the injured party in this scenario, and very sure this was a surface-level fight, not the kind that makes any real impact to the bedrock of their love. She’s a grumpy person, and Pete’s passionate, and they grate on each other when they’re too hot in a cramped space for weeks on end. None of that means their relationship is really on the table. Like, she was thinking about the gravitational inevitability of spending the rest of their lives together in the back of that shitty van two highway exits ago. She is in no way prepared to see this level of pain on Pete’s face. 

She sticks to what she knows. “I told you what my problem is. You’re texting Mikey too much. It makes me jealous.”

Pete stamps her foot like a filly, sending up a small splash of best-left-unidentified liquid from the floor. “Would you _stop_? We both know what our relationship is. It really pisses me off when you act like I’m about to lose you.”

Pat’s eyes burn sharply, another surprise. “If anyone’s going to lose anyone,” she starts to say, but the words wobble towards tears on her tongue. It’s too recent, The Incident, What Happened With Pete In The Parking Lot. She can’t talk about it. It will be years before she can talk about it. They’ll be little old biddies filming prank videos and celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary in their retirement community before she can talk about it. 

And Pete’s right there. Like she heard what Pat couldn’t say. Like she always will. Pat’s back presses against the clammy tile of the bathroom wall and Pete crushes into her, all elbows always, lips at the pulse point in Pat’s neck. “Sometimes you make me feel like I grabbed hold of the wind, and I’m not about to let go,” she says, hot and rough. “This is once-in-a-lifetime. You’re an ocean envying a raindrop, Pat, I swear to you. There are so many ways I’ll let you down but this isn’t one of them. I’m yours, for you, forever. Okay?”

Pat’s caught in the crossfire of biological imperatives, one half crying and one half wanting so hard it throbs between her legs. Still, in the background, Jo’s piss is Niagra Falls; and in the foreground it’s the grungy stall of a gas station bathroom. Pat half-swallows a sob and makes a horrible, hiccuping snort, and Pete kisses it off her lips. Pat feels so stupid. Being jealous of texts is so _stupid_. She hates texting. She refuses to get a phone with a keyboard, on principle. Pat does a lot of things on principle. She should be _happy_ the woman of her dreams found someone to give her something Pat’s not able to. Or even a lot of somethings Pat’s not able to! Who cares where Pete showers? It’s on a too-small, too-old bench seat with worn-thin upholstery that Pete sleeps at night, holding Pat. Years in and they still sleep like that, curled up like quotation marks, needing no more space than a van seat even on their queen mattress at home. It never matters where it is; their heads are just that close.

Pat feels stupid for doubting Pete, and also Pat feels Pete _kissing_ her, like she hasn’t been kissed in more than a week, due to the always-public conditions of touring and the gross way dudes react when girls kiss in front of them. Pete’s body is all over hers, their chests pressed so hard it makes Pat dizzy, Pete’s hip bones pushing into hers like they could bruise themselves into one, her mouth on Pat’s and her tongue on Pat’s and her on Pat, Pat’s, _hers_. Pat’s not crying anymore, not even half; she’s moaning, low in her throat, and Pete’s licking into her mouth in an oh-so-evocative way, and her hands are under Pete’s shirt like she hoped they’d be, stroking up the soft, secret, downy skin of Pete’s sides. Pete bites her lip just a little too hard, how Pat likes it, and moves her mouth to Pat’s neck; she sucks Pat’s pulse into her mouth, leaves teeth marks across those golden vocal cords, and Pat’s hands slip inside Pete’s bra, her thumbs brushing nipples already hard in anticipation of her. She’s louder than moaning now and she doesn’t care, how could she care, their second album has been topping the charts for the last _six weeks_ and Petra Wentz is leaving a trail of hickeys down her neck, limning how throat turns to collar turns to breast, and Pat’s head smacks back against the tile a little too hard as Pete slides a hand into her waistband—

 _POUND POUND POUND._ The flimsy stall door slams against its screws like they will pop and Pat has to swallow her scream. Her hands fly out of Pete’s shirt like Pete’s tits burned her, but Pete chooses that moment to curl a finger into Pat’s aching pussy instead of withdrawing.

“What?” Pete barks through the door, voice almost normal, swirling her finger up through Pat like getting caught’s all part of the fun. And—god—Pat’s hips buck without her permission, wanting more than one finger—it is. It really is.

“I just want you to know you are both truly disgusting, regrettable human beings,” Jo hisses through the door, “and you have thoroughly tainted the first clean bathroom I’ve seen in a week. I hope you get pregnant from the toilet seat.”

Pat opens her mouth to say something catty, or try to around her feverish panting, but Pete covers her open mouth hard with her free hand. Pat bites into the flesh there, glad of it, and Pete pulls her finger out teasingly over Pat’s clit only to surge back in with three.

“Love you too, Josephine!” Pete calls, and then turns and kisses her hand over Pat’s mouth with a wet smack. “I know you’re feeling pent up,” she hisses into Pat’s ear as Jo washes her hands loudly. “So let me give you something real to be mad about.”

Long after Jo has slammed out of the bathroom, muttering in disgust, Pete is still fucking Pat, with such deliberate, teasing slowness that Pat could scream. Does scream, muffled badly by Pete’s hand. Pete finger-fucks Pat without letting her climax until she bites down on that hand with intent to wound, fucks her til Pat has kissed her so frantically they’re both swollen-lipped and sore, fucks her til Pat writhes her hips to chase her own orgasm, fucks her til Pat begs. Then Pete’s teeth find Pat’s neck and she licks into the skin, growling, “My pickled fingers prove I’m yours, you’re mine,” and Pat fucks against Pete’s hand, aching all over, ready to promise anything, gasping _Yes, yes_. Pete leans in close, presses with the heel of her hand on the outside of Pat’s abdomen, capturing that _spot_ between internal and external pressure, and Pat makes a fool of herself, honestly, doesn’t care, loses her self-consciousness and mind completely as she thrusts against the trap Pete’s created and _comes_ , pleasure spurting out of her like a tidal wave of salt, coming against Pete’s hand so hard it squelches as she squirts, and she’s left rigid and shaking from the deep internal spasms of an orgasm that involved much more of her body than she has control over.

“You’re mine and I’m yours,” she can barely whisper, their foreheads tented together as they both pant from exertion. Pete keeps her fingers in Pat until she feels Pat’s heartbeat slow from the inside, then slides them out with particular care to swipe the clit, just so that Pat, thoroughly spent, catches and gasps and quickens, like fucking Pete once is never enough, like no amount of fucking Pete will ever sate her.

It takes all of Pat’s willpower, calf strength, and puritan sense of bathroom-ickiness not to slide to the floor. Pete’s hand hangs at her side, fingers glistening, wrinkled as promised, and she regards Pat with serious eyes and heavy lashes. “You know it’s true,” she says, and Pat can’t tell or care if it’s a question or command.

“I do,” she says, means it.

Pete cracks a grin, and reaches her wet hand out for Pat’s. “Want to get a hotel tonight? Just the two of us. I’m sick of begging tiny, lukewarm showers off strangers. I want endless hot water, enough room to kneel, and _you._ ”

Pat feels another wave of arousal spasm through the over-sensitive, friction-bruised skin below her waist. They can’t afford a hotel room and they both know it. But they believe they can someday, and _someday_ is what credit cards were made for. A hotel room tonight, when they’re broke, is a promise on the future, when they’ll be everything Pete’s imagined for them and more. And Pat knows why she’s with this girl, and why she’s good enough to be; she’s the collateral Pete’s been banking on, signing on, writing words for Pat to sing on. Together they can make anything come true.

“Endless hot water, you on your knees, and your Sidekick stays in the van,” Pat says. Just because she’s been fucked into melted butter doesn’t mean she can’t negotiate.

Pete grins, kisses her right where her chin meets her neck. “Deal,” she sears into that sensitive skin. “But Pat—if all this finger dexterity is something you’re into, you know I’ve gotta keep texting. It’s like spring training for your pussy.”

Pat takes her hand. “Okay, me forgiving you right now? It’s conditional on you not saying upsetting things.”

Pete’s eyebrows leap off her forehead as she leads Pat past the sink, out of the restroom, out of the gas station, leaving the Amoco a little filthier than they found it. “ _Forgiving_ me?” she says, her tone bled through with sexy teasing and also the warning she’s all too ready to jump back into their fight. “I didn’t apologize for shit. Like, if anyone should say they’re sorry, it’s you.”

“ _Me_?” Pat finds the fight, and its delicious angry-fuck sexual tension, exactly where she left it. “ _I’m_ not the one on my _phone_ twenty-four hours a day—”

“Oh no you don’t!” Jo hollers as they emerge into the parking lot, bickering like birds. “After what I just had to _overhear_ , you do not get to keep fighting.” She’s bright pink and holding a bottle of butterscotch Schnapps by the neck. “I deserve _silence_ and I am willing to do _anything_ to get it. I will cut you into ear-plug sized chunks—“

Andy captures Jo gently by the shoulders and sits her down on the hitch that connects the trailer to the van. The bottle of Schnapps is more than a third empty, though Pat doesn’t think they were in the bathroom _that_ long. Right? Though Pete’s fingers are pretty pruny…

“Do you want any Schnapps?” Andy asks pointedly. “We’re celebrating.”

“No, _I’m_ celebrating. No sinners invited. I wanted to toast to the cleanest bathroom this side of the Mason-Dixon line,” Jo says, mouth sticky with Buttershots. “Now I drink to forget.”

“Oh, please,” Pete says, grabbing the bottle by the neck. “You’ve heard worse.”

“That doesn’t make it _better_!” Jo howls while Pete drinks. “This is the Ritz Carlton of gas station bathrooms, and you _defiled_ it. Sex is against van rules.”

“Technically that wasn’t in the van,” Pat points out.

Jo grabs the bottle, takes another hearty chug, and passes it to Pat with a glare. Pat wouldn’t usually drink Schnapps in a parking lot two months after her 21st birthday (you know, because of her principles), but Andy would clearly rather deal with three drunk girls than one black-out Jo, so Pat lifts it to her lips and does her part.

“Actually I’m kind of having a nice time in this parking lot,” Andy volunteers, taking a sip of their soda. “And you guys owe me a PayDay. Each. Want to hang out for a while?”

“God, yes. Then we can use this bathroom again. It’s _so good_ ,” says Jo.

It’s average at best. Pat opens her mouth to be contrary, because that’s what she’s best at, and Pete swoops in to kiss her quiet.

It turns out getting drunk in the parking lot of the world’s largest Amoco sign is not the worst way to pass a night in St. Louis. They sit on the trailer hitch together, passing the bottle back and forth and watching the exhaust-choked sunset. “The traffic almost sounds like the waves on Lake Michigan,” Jo says at one point, catastrophically drunk, and Pat is already homesick for Chicago. Touring is their life these days, but that crappy apartment is her home. Eventually, Jo has fallen off the trailer hitch onto her ass, which is hilarious; the bottle is empty, which is tragic; and everyone’s starving, even though Andy has eaten three PayDays. They take turns peeing—Jo won’t let Pete and Pat go in together—and the girls stand as honor guard to keep random Missourians and their gender questions clear of the bathroom while Andy uses it. It’s kind of a perfect evening, all things considered. Especially since Pete’s phone, Pat is satisfied to note, is nowhere to be found.

Pete puts her arm around Pat once they’re in the backseat, leaving the world’s most giant Amoco sign in search of food. “Let’s do the hotel tomorrow, after we play,” Pat says impulsively. “Tonight I kind of want to stay in the van.”

Pete tickles her fingers up Pat’s sensitive neck and the bites she left on it. “Are you sure?” she purrs. “I have all kinds of ideas about things I can do to you in a shower.”

Pat kisses her, hard and slow, and laughs low in her throat with longing. “We have a lot of bomb-ass hotel rooms in our future,” she says. “Tonight we’re on Warped Tour. So let’s go back to the festival grounds with everyone and hang out. Maybe you can introduce me to some lady musicians.”

“Really?” Pete’s eyes sparkle like a goddamn cartoon character.

“I said maybe,” Pat grouses.

Andy drives them off over the horizon. Even though it’s the same shitty van as _literally always_ , for tonight at least, there’s nowhere Pat would rather be.


End file.
